Narcotics Anonymous

Social media is an integral part of people’s lives, especially young people who are apt to share with the world what they are about to do, or have already done. It is quite common for young adults to share what took place over the weekend, including parties where excessive drinking took place. On the other end of the spectrum, many young people in addiction recovery use social media to connect with other active members of the community. A new study has examined when social media and recovery line up, TODAY reports.

Recovery.org conducted a study which involved Instagram and getting sober. The novel study tracked various recovery related hashtags (#s), examining over 79,000 posts from all 50 states. The researchers found some interesting results.

The top recovery hashtags in order:

#SoberLife

#Sobriety

#Sober

#SoberLiving

#AlcoholicsAnonymous

#NarcoticsAnonymous

#12Steps

#WeDoRecover

#RecoveringAddict

The top three states that mentioned recovery the most per capita (1:100,000) on social media:

While Utah mentioned recovery the most on Instagram, it only has the fifth most meetings of Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous per capita in the U.S., according to the article. On the other hand, California had nine times as many people in rehab as Utah. The study cannot account for why people in Utah are more active online about recovery.

“In terms of science, we’re at the very beginning of it,” explained Dr. Warren Bickel, director of the Addiction Recovery Research Center at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute and founder of the International Quit and Recover Registry. “One of the amazing things about the field of addiction is that we don’t rigorously study people in recovery…and we can learn a lot from them.”